A TELLTALE WINK: OR WAS IT?

Crime readers, real and fictional, will like this excellent little novel for their spare time reading. It’s a one-off non-murder, and just the sort of thing for your brief case whilst waiting for your matter to come on in court.

It’s also a fictional crime book for lawyers who like the fine balance of legal argument pursuing a case through the different eyes of the leading participants with great attention to detail. So we have the lawyer, the doc, the judge and the copper, in fact all the ingredients of a great whodunit where we know who did it but was there a deception and a genuine mental illness? You decide.

I’m not going to spoil your story by retelling it so do read the different accounts by the participants. In a largely autobiographical work which gives the feeling of the time and the author’s early years gaining his forensic experience, Wheatley depicts how he saves a person from the gallows at the very end of the capital punishment era by securing a verdict which leads Ms Earle to Broadmoor via the old Court of Criminal Appeal.

But did she do it with the requisite intent? That is the question … and the beauty of this story. She doesn’t speak. The vacant expression on the face as if there is nothing there when you look into her eyes … yes, you have probably had those clients, too, or even had them as staff! Wheatley dangles the facts with an imaginative flair throughout.

What I found special about the silent lady, however, is that it is for you, the reader, to decide- did she do it intentionally, would she do it again, and was she properly punished for her offence, if any!

Wheatley gives the clear impression that the prosecution did not get up to the standard of proof so we cannot be satisfied she ‘did it’ within the meaning of murder. But was the judge was right to accept a verdict of ‘manslaughter by reason of insanity’ whatever that really means to us as most will see it as not guilty because of the insanity and is another example of the confusion of current homicide laws and McNaghten.

Throughout my reading of this novel I day-dreamed of Marshall Hall’s biography which I first read 40 years ago when the law was perceived differently- he was, after all, the ultimate “firearms brief” with his special seat cushion and a genuine interest in hard cases.

From Marshall Hall to the realms of fiction where there is Horace Rumpole who would remind me of his Penge Bungalow triumph and be steadfast with his ‘not guilty’ pleas, and all those irritating expert witnesses who are always so emphatic, and the solid police officers who we hope do not make too many moral judgments anymore.

Yes, Wheatley blends the ingredients well here so we have the best make-up of the good trial read with all the questions we would like to pose as amateur sleuths, or even trial lawyers. It’s a book for the individual to read alone, as we are all individuals at the Bar, or in the courtroom- sole traders par excellence.

“I think Isabel ‘did it’, but she didn’t get away with it because she went to Broadmoor” my neighbour said to me. Hmm! That’s only what my neighbour said on that train as I whiled away the hours of travel going down to a country county court for a nice driving spate between the locals on a terrible country road (no, not Devon this time). I had caught the paralegal bug of reading whilst I waited.

And then I told my traveller: actually it’s a true story (with a bit of embellishment), but did she wink at Derek at the end of it all, or not? Make you own mind up. I know what I think, but I’m not saying. ( )